A company that publishes digital versions of textbooks from 65 publishers has developed a dashboard for use by students who use their materials to give them the rundown on just how much studying they're actually doing. Kno introduced Kno Me at the International Consumer Electronics Show taking place in Las Vegas this week.

Based on what a student is doing with the digital content purchased from Kno, Kno Me will report back to them with time statistics about textbook interaction levels, time management, and personal progress. Users can share their personal results with peers through a social sharing feature.

Kno Me allows students to track how much time they're spending with their textbooks and compare with peers.

"The question we want to help students answer is 'How much am I really studying?' If you're a student, you don't know the answer until you get your grade, and if it's bad, it's too late," said Osman Rashid, CEO and co-founder of the company. "Now, with Kno Me, you see near real time progress and get smart feedback on your own study habits, and you can compare your results with your classmates."

The statistics reported by the dashboard feature are derived by a proprietary analytics platform, which measures the average time a student spends interacting with the textbook and time within specific chapters, the percentage of pages in the chapter the student annotates, as well as the percentage of glossary terms the student has mastered. These kinds of facts are used by the company to determine how engaged a student is in the material.

Kno Me, included in the price of the study material, is available on all Kno interactive textbooks for iPad, Windows 8, and Web browsers. The company said it would release versions for Android and Windows 7 "soon."

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal and Campus Technology. She can be reached at dian@dischaffhauser.com or on Twitter @schaffhauser.